The Tulane University Debate Team reached the quarterfinals of the National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA) National Championships last Sunday at the Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The partnership of Claire Kueffner ’18 and Khristyan Trejo ’19 finished in the…
Category: A Day in the Life
Seventeen Years of Blogging
Yesterday was the seventeenth anniversary of Introspection, my first blog. It lasted for just seven years and change before the daily short-format gave way to this more haphazard long format, now nearly ten years into process. My first post was…
They Showed Us Our Past
When we found them, we were not thinking of our history, even while we were watching theirs. We were thinking of visitation, of proof of life, of how similar or different they were from us. We were thinking of little…
Stop Calling Trump Incompetent
“There’s an old joke, um, two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort. And one of ’em says ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says ‘Yeah, I know, and such small portions!’” -Woody…
Twisting the Night Away
For more of my life than I care to admit, I was an avid player of Dark Age of Camelot, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG for, well, long). Dark Age, for the uninitiated, was basically the precursor to…
This Land is… Your Land?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I feel about the United States of America. I suspect I am not alone in this. In fact, I know I am not alone in this. Every post on Facebook, half of…
When the Good Die Old: Mary Tyler Moore (1936-2017) and Richard Adams (1920-2016)
Richard Adams died on Christmas Eve last year. That will always be a fact of my life, that I got engaged to Alex on the night of the day that Richard Adams, author of my favorite book of all-time, Watership…
The Case Against Free Trade
I spend a lot of time arguing on Facebook. It comes and goes as a use of time. It’s often frustrating, but in the best moments, it feels like there’s a real opportunity to change someone’s mind. Facebook has become…
Obama’s Legacy, Trump’s Window, and the Future of Hope
I didn’t vote for Barack Obama in 2008, or in 2012. As regular readers will know, I also didn’t vote for the Republicans in those elections. I wanted to vote for him in 2008, came very close, but ultimately decided…
Start Walking
By any metric, 2017 has been a great year so far. Now that I’ve said that out loud (on print), in public, it feels like a jinx. And not just because of my erstwhile belief in Mack Truck Time, the…